


What Big Teeth You Have

by rightsidethru



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (aka: Tony has some WOLFISH tendencies), Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Norse Mythology and Marvel Canon Mash-Up, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Tony: What Big Teeth You Have, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 20:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11676858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/pseuds/rightsidethru
Summary: Oh, Tony--What bigteethyou have.





	What Big Teeth You Have

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how it came about, but I got an itch to write a Fenrir!Tony oneshot, which is what you're reading here.
> 
> Not beta read! :D;;

** What Big Teeth You Have **

_“Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.”_  
Equal Rites ― Terry Pratchett

**

Howard Stark was a poor father. His temper was short—made shorter by the scotch that he had become dependent upon—and the genius inventor oftentimes took that temper out on the son that would soon enough be outstripping his own talents. Verbal and emotional abuse were oftentimes the only way he knew how to interact with Tony (as horrible as Howard knew that was, _truly_ ), but habits were hard to break—and jealousy and frustration made the desire to do so nonexistent.

But at least Howard was honest when he admitted that he had never raised a hand to his son.

\--if one were to dig a little deeper, however, they would discover that the lack of physicality came not from the older man’s sterling character, but from a very carefully hidden sense of _fear_. Howard was afraid of his own son:

The first and only time that Howard had ever raised a hand to Tony, the then four year-old had lifted his face to catch his father’s gaze with his own, eyes nearly honey-gold and otherworldly in the dim, tungsten lighting of the living room of their New York home. Howard’s slap had stopped before it could ever connect with Tony’s cheek, and the child never once looked away from his father, not even when it had originally appeared that a strike was incoming. He continued watching Howard, gaze eerie and unsettling both, and Howard did something that he never thought would happen—had _never_ happened, not even when he was caught behind enemy lines during the war.

He took a step back and retreated.

Tony never said a word—but neither did he look away, gaze tracking every shift, every gesture, every motion that Howard made, much like how a predator tracked its prey while waiting for the most opportune time to strike.

_There are some who’d happily bite the hand that feeds them_ , Howard suddenly thought as he roughly swallowed, the weight of the air in the room seeming to solidify and settle around his shoulders like a mantle. He could feel the small hairs at the back of his neck slowly begin to rise.

“Go to your room, Tony,” Howard ordered, voice hoarser than it normally would have been after two tumblers work of several fingers worth of scotch. He cleared his throat and continued, trying for firmer ground: “Don’t come out until tomorrow morning.”

Tony slowly blinked and, with that small gesture, the tension within the room broke.

“Okay.”

The child turned and headed out of the room, not bothering to glance behind himself as he left—immediately aiming for the staircase that would take him up to the second level of the manor and his room beyond it. As Tony ascended the stairs, Howard watched him, not yet moving from where he had retreated to during their— _confrontation?_ —and couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling that sunk his gut low: as if he had just narrowly managed to avoid triggering something far more dangerous than himself into attacking.

The fear that coated his throat turned his scotch sour.

++

Tony was the smallest, the youngest, the most obviously vulnerable student on the MIT campus and yet, surprisingly enough, he remained unbullied. He went from class to class unmolested, didn’t have to fight others for time in the lab—managed to conduct himself in an almost carefree manner as he conquered courses and changed the robotics world at the tender age of fifteen.

When Rhodey eventually brought up the question of how Tony had managed to avoid the bullies—and without having to pay others to leave him alone as another option, as well—the younger teen had just glanced up, quizzical expression upon his face for a moment or two before clearing into something sharp and hungry.

Tony smiled wide.

“ _I bite._ ”

++

“I’m—I’m sorry, Mr. Stark! I don’t understand what’s gotten into her! Leah, calm! Be quiet, Leah! –she’s normally not like this, oh, my God, I’m so incredibly _sorry_ —“

The normally well-behaved terrier that had attended many a gala with her world-famous actress owner, Isabella, whined and barked frantically in fear as the woman continued to try and step closer to Tony. The closer Isabella tried to go, the louder the dog’s distress became. Nothing the owner could do would settle or quiet Leah, and it left the actress bewildered and not a little bit afraid to see her dog so out-of-sorts, especially when such an event should have been an old hat for her little companion.

“Leah, _please_ —“

Tony glanced up from where he had been watching the terrier claw his owner’s arms as she desperately tried to scrabble out of Isabella’s hold, and he offered up a one-shouldered shrug in response. “It’s all right,” the inventor dismissed, waving away the woman’s many apologies with a casual gesture of a hand. “I never really considered myself a _dog_ person.”

++

Snow coated the ground in thick, pristine layers—fresh powder for all of the resident skiers to enjoy in the morning—and Tony leaned against the railing of his room’s balcony, amber gaze trailing over the sight of a midnight-lit Grøndalen valley. The moon was heavy and pregnant high in the sky, providing more than enough light to throw the needles of the fir trees into sharp contrast against the virgin background that the new snow provided.

It was early enough in Norway’s ski season that few guests were checked into the Harahorn Hotel—so, too, did that mean that there was little to no chance that anyone would see a Tony Stark, clad only in a pair of boxer-briefs, comfortably standing in twelve degree Fahrenheit weather.

Normally surrounded by music and people and life, Tony closed his eyes and _breathed_ , drinking in the stillness.

In the distance, a wolf pack howled.

++

Tony was nineteen the first time Obie had decided to let him handle his own business deal.

His godfather had just smiled paternally at the engineer, clapping an encouraging hand over Tony’s shoulder while chewing at the end of an unlit cigar. “Gotta learn sometime, kiddo,” Obadiah Stane had informed the younger man, tone pragmatic and amused both. “You’ll be doing this on your own full-time when you take over at twenty-one; practicing now means that you’ll be better prepared then—and, besides, Tones. I wouldn’t make you jump into the deep end your first go-around, anyway.”

The last statement ended up being an _under_ statement, if only because Tony’s potential new client happened to be a warlord. True enough, an American-approved warlord—otherwise the Stark heir wouldn’t have been meeting with him at all—but a warlord, nonetheless.

It was obvious from the start that the military man didn’t respect Tony: the inventor had something that the warlord wanted and was willing to play nice to get, but condescension dripped from every word, every gesture: he thought Tony a fool and one who would never grow into the shoes that Howard had left behind.

Tony remained silent and watched the older man for several long moments.

Eventually, however, he leaned forward as his body language shifted into something _dangerous_ and _predatory_ , and offered a smile that was wide and feral and filled with teeth that were sharper than what should be humanly possible.

“Let’s cut the bullshit,” Tony had offered genially, smile never dropping, “and let’s talk _business_.”

It was that meeting that the young Stark gained a new nickname: _Merchant of Death._

++

The holographic rendering of the globe slowly rotated before Tony’s almost-bored gaze.

The young man sat with cheek propped against a closed fist, buried deep in the heart of his workshop with Black Sabbath’s “Lord of this World” blasting in the background.

_You think you're innocent you've nothing to fear_  
_You don't know me, you say, but isn't it clear?_  
_You turn to me in all your worldly greed and pride_  
_But will you turn to me when it's your turn to die, yeah?_

Tony finally quirked a small smile and reached out, crushing the holographic world in one hand.

++

The Ten Rings believed that they had Tony Stark cowed: near death, tortured, betrayed, threatened with the end of life unless he complied with their orders—the terrorist organization believed that they had the billionaire cowed and complacent in his fear.

They seemed to have forgotten that, in the truest of fairy tales, monsters were always born from the cold, from darkness and pain—from the borderlands that lay between possibilities and _Will_ , a twilight area that Tony had long ago become familiar with and traversed through. Monsters, too, were born from the spark that came from a supernova’s exploding heart:

Of death.

++

Deep within Tony’s most private server room, disabled—for now—from any outside connection, resided two AIs that the inventor had been dreaming of, had been coding, long before JARVIS had come into being. They currently slumbered, not yet aware of the world just beyond their reach—

But that would one day change in the future.

Tony brushed a hand over warm chassis, taking a muted sort of comfort in watching the towers’ lights shift between yellows and reds and greens. The steady rhythm was reassuring, familiar to the engineer as a person’s beating heart or the constant rise-and-fall of another’s chest. There was life here—in a way, anyway. An interpretation of it.

The calloused pads of the inventor’s fingers brushed over the names etched into the servers’ casings:

**HATI.**

**SKÖLL.**

++

The Hulk never bothered Tony.

When the green creature lingered after battle, not yet willing to relinquish control over to Bruce Banner, the engineer was the only one that the Hulk hadn’t attempted to strike out against. Whether it was during the heat of battle or the quiet that settled upon the field as adrenaline slowly began to leave people’s bodies, every member of the Avengers team had had an unfortunate run-in with Bruce’s _grumpier_ alter-ego.

Every member except for Tony Stark—for Iron Man.

No one commented on it, thought it strange—after all, Tony and Bruce were close and got along well; it was assumed that Bruce’s affection for his ‘Science Bro’ carried over onto the Hulk. The others were wrong in that assumption, but it was one that was convenient enough that Tony didn’t plan on correcting any time soon.

The Hulk just had clearer vision, after all.

(Like called to like.)

++

“Sir! Sir, come—would you like your fortune told?”

Bourbon Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter was filled overflowing with con artists that drew in the tourists, with bars that remained open day and night, with history and ghosts that flickered at the corners of its residents’ gazes, sometimes seen but always felt as a cold press against the backs of others’ necks. It went without saying that Tony had a love-hate relationship with the area: the drinks were overpriced and watered down half of the time, though the dark-seated _belief_ of locals and visitors both settled something deep within the marrow of his bones.

The inventor paused before the Tarot reader’s table, eyeing the stack of cards for a long, considering moment.

Eventually, though, Tony reached out to draw from the pile, flipping the card he had drawn to land right-side up on the small table—curious to see what his future may or may not hold for him. The fortune teller’s eyes widened as she caught sight of Tony’s card, a small inhale giving away her dismay, but Tony himself just quirked a small, satisfied smile at the result. Tossing a hundred dollar bill next to the Tarot deck, the engineer turned to head down another street to where some of the symposium members lay waiting and scattered amongst a variety of different bars.

_The Tower._

++

The Scepter’s tip settled over Tony’s arc reactor—his heart—with a ringing _clink!_ of metal against metal; it flared to life, bright blue against the muted chromes and sharp whites of the billionaire’s penthouse, but that was all that it did. The Scepter failed, leaving a pair of wolf-gold eyes to stare into Loki’s own arctic blue.

“This usually works…” the trickster god murmured softly, voice threaded through with a distant sort of confusion.

Unsteady at the fact that his weapon was proving itself ineffective against the inventor, Loki raised his gaze once more to meet Tony’s: the Midgardian didn’t bother to once look away, instead just smiling wide—wider—inhumanly wide with a mouth full of too-sharp teeth, a gaping maw ravenous enough to swallow the world whole—

And Loki’s eyes flickered green in a soul-deep flash of recognition.

“You’re—“

++

Once upon a time ago, long before fact shifted into legend, the people of Asgard caught one of Loki’s children: Fenrir—Fenrisúlfr, the Vánagandr—and imprisoned him through lies and betrayal, chained him far and away and alone because of a bladed-edged prophecy and the fear that was born of it.

But the wolf was truly Loki’s child, though it was something that the Aesir seemed to forget often; to their eyes, Fenrir was little more than a dumb beast that was destined to kill Odin Allfather and lay waste to the rest of the universe during Ragnarök. 

And yet:

Being of Loki’s progeny also meant that chaos and change (and entropy) ran through his veins as thick—thicker, even—as the blood that the gods had forced him to shed during their betrayal. It took time and an effort that was fueled equally by rage and the rejection of _this_ particular would-have-been, but Fenrir’s magic eventually flickered to life even through his bindings…

And the wolf became something different, something _new_.

(Something so much more dangerous.)

++

“Howard, I’m pregnant.”

::fin::


End file.
